Mount Hkusam identified in the 1930 BC Gazetteer, as labelled on British Admiralty Chart 3260, 1902 et seq. Form of name changed to Hkusam Mountain 6 November 1952 on 92K.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Presumably named in association with the nearby First Nations Village, by Commander C.H. Simpson, RN, surveying vessel Egeria, while surveying these waters in 1900. See Hkusam (community) for origin information.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

According to anthropologist Wilson Duff, Hkusam is a Coast Salish name in an area now occupied by the Kwakwaka’wakw. Randy Bouchard, an ethnographer and linguist, has translated Hkusam (or X̲’wésam) as “having fat or oil”. The word refers, he suggests, to the Salmon River, which enters the ocean near the most northerly community of the Comox (Coast Salish) people but long since abandoned by them and taken over by Lekwiltok, the southernmost of the Kwakwaka’wakw tribal groups. The name Hkusam has been spelled many different ways over the years, including Husam, Kusam, Xusam, Koosam and Khusan. Port Kusam post office was opened in 1899 at Ruby House, a store, hotel and steamship stop built by Theodore Peterson in 1895. The post office was relocated farther up the Salmon River valley to a more populated area in 1911 and renamed Sayward. Nearby Hkusam Mountain takes its name from the same source as Hkusam Bay. (From the entry for Hkusam Bay)

Source: Scott, Andrew; "The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names"; Harbour Publishing, Madeira Park, 2009, page 264.